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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
C. Kalbach
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 95 | Number 1 | January 1987 | Pages 70-78
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE87-A20433
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Improvements have been made to an existing method for implementing realistic pairing corrections in particle-hole state densities. The threshold energy for the pairing “single particle” states is used to replace the usual equispacing model Pauli energy, resulting in an improvement in the calculated state densities for low exciton numbers. Remaining discrepancies between the simple state densities and the results of a detailed pairing calculation are attributable to deficiencies in the original equispacing model state density formula. An ad hoc improvment to this formula is proposed. The method is extended to state densities for two types of fermions, and questions associated with its practical implementation are discussed.